Cuba Gooding, Jr.

CUBA GOODING JR.

Date of Birth: January 2, 1968

After Cuba Gooding Jr.'s father got a hit single with his band The Main Ingredient, his family moved from the Bronx to Los Angeles and their lifestyle changed due to the extra cash flow. After his father left, Cuba returned to Christianity at age 13 and attended four different high schools in Southern California.

In 1984, at the age of 16, he scored his first professional gig as a breakdancer for Lionel Richie's performance at the Olympics. His appearance in a high school production of Li'l Abner gained him notice by an agent.

He got work in commercials and a small part on the television show Hill Street Blues. But it wasn't enough, and Gooding decided to take lessons to improve his acting skills. Classes and workshops landed him several other TV roles and a feature-film debut as the celebrated "Boy Getting Haircut" in Eddie Murphy's Coming to America.

In 1990, Gooding landed the part of Tre Styles in Boyz N the Hood and plucked what was to be the first plum of his career. The next few years saw Gooding weaving in and out of commendable and unworthy films. In 1994, at the ripe age of 26, Gooding got married.

He was finally rewarded for his patience when he was cast in Cameron Crowe's Jerry Maguire as an elite athlete. The audition process had been arduous - most people found the 5'11" actor too short for the role.

With the huge success of Jerry Maguire, and the Oscar he won for his performance, Gooding seemed once again an actor to be reckoned with. Few actors get a second shot at stardom, and Gooding feels justifiably wary, yet optimistic, about the future: "It's so hard to predict. If I'm accurate, it's out of luck. And if I'm inaccurate, I'll feel like an idiot for guessing in the first place."

Since then he has won several more awards for his outstanding work, including a Character and Morality in Entertainment Award and an Image Award for Radio (2003), in which he played a developmentally challenged man. In 2002, he received a Star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. In Lee Daniels' The Butler (2013), he starred alongside Forest Whitaker and Oprah Winfrey. He also starred Machete Kills (2013) alongside Danny Trejo and Sofia Vergara, and played Fred Gray in Selma (2014), which had David Oyelowo in the title role.

In 2016, Cuba was nominated for a Primetime Emmy for his role as O.J. Simpson on the first season of the series American Crime Story (2016), which followed the story of the Simpson murder trial. That same year, he played roles on the TV anthology series American Horror Story.

In 2018, Cuba directed and starred in the film Bayou Caviar. Most recently, he worked alongside Jaden Smith and Cara Delevigne in the Sony Pictures film Life in a Year (2019).

Married since 1994 to his high school sweetheart Sara Kapfer, with whom he has three children, Cuba was reportedly heartbroken when his wife filed for legal separation in 2014. He has since become known for his wild partying and in 2019, he was accused of groping a woman at a Manhattan nightclub.